Integrated Marketing – How online and offline marketing work together to help your business

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When companies decide to undertake a marketing campaign, hot topic ideas are always part of the discussion. But what really makes a campaign unique and yet deliver results? Does the campaign include a paid ads strategy, commonly called – pay per click (PPC) or is search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, perhaps an email marketing campaign part of the plan for local businesses? Before any business jumps into a tactical approach, it is worth taking some time to explore what are the businesses goals and objectives, what other marketing efforts are parts of the long-term plan and what the vision is for the company. Once this is known, that’s when perhaps an integrated marketing campaign may be the way to go and be the most beneficial approach.

An integrated marketing approach involves deliberate use of various marketing methods that all work together towards a common goal. Each method reinforces the goals and the messages that you want your clients to read and digest. In today’s market, using both online (videos, social media, digital ads, email marketing) and offline (brochures, direct mail, outdoor advertising, print ads) options bring together a campaign that can strengthen the brand message and get you closer to your goals.

So, imagine you are a company in Mississauga, or Burlington/ Oakville serving clients locally. What if a pay per click campaign or an SEO campaign was implemented that targeted local clients and now the same clients happen to see your ads online and in local newspaper too? What will this combined approach do for you? Well, an integrated marketing campaign would most certainly create a larger impact by taking all those components and working them into the overall plan, targeting your customers.

Why Consistency Matters

One of the keys to a strong and successful integrated marketing campaign is to have a consistent look & feel. Just because you are working with more than one medium doesn’t mean you can use different identities. Everything should look consistent so that the person reading it has an immediate visual recognition. Visual identity includes things such as a company logo, style of graphics and photos as well as the fonts and colors used.

In addition to staying consistent with visuals, it’s important to align your message and communicate effectively, clearly and consistently. After all, it takes a human brain 9 to 27 touch points (approximately, many studies have been done around this) to recognize a brand, remember it and relate to it.

Once your visual identity and message are clear, you can adapt your content to be used or re-purposed across all the different channels you will be using. Some companies call it creating their content curation plan.

As an example, let’s think about a company that has created a video. In an integrated marketing campaign, the video could be used in the following ways:

Video embedded in a blog post that will be on the company website

Video uploaded to the company’s YouTube channel

Post a link of the video on LinkedIn

Sound bites from the video shared on Facebook and Twitter with the video link

Video embedded in your email newsletter

Video link included in your print ad going out in the local paper or magazine

The video is also a chance for the company to integrate all the ways that people can connect with them – their website link, their Twitter handle, where to find them on Facebook, where to find their physical location and how to reach them by phone – all of these elements should be in the video.

Another example could be running billboard or print ads or perhaps ads in the newspaper. Now, imagine the same look and feel and messaging being replicated via online banner ads and re-marketing ads. These ads are typically called paid ads or display ads for online mediums.

The idea is that each aspect of the campaign, both offline and online elements, should drive people to take the right action. Essentially, help you reach your goals, whether that is to get increased branding and visibility, more email subscribers, more engagement and a larger audience on social media, more sales, or more web traffic, etc.

Creating and executing a successful integrated marketing campaign is a big undertaking. Designing the campaign is the main focus of the work, but you must also include ways to track activity and capture analytics to determine if your campaign is providing the results you desired.

If you would like to get an opinion on how your business can improve their online marketing results by using an integrated marketing approach, contact us at Measure Marketing. We service progressive small businesses, mid sized corporations and units of large companies located in Toronto, Mississauga, Burlington, Milton, Oakville, Hamilton, Guelph, Markham, Richmond Hill, North York or Brampton. We’d be happy to discuss your marketing goals and explore how an integrated approach can help you communicate to your target markets and expand your business.

Arti Sharma

Arti Sharma is an Online Marketing Strategist and the founder of Measure Marketing Results Inc. Arti has been helping businesses market themselves more effectively for over a decade. For the past 7 years she has developed her niche in online marketing and now helps businesses of all sizes get found online and convert traffic to leads and customers. Arti has held several workshops and now holds free seminars for local businesses in the Ontario region. You can learn more about registering for these seminars and marketing your business online on her website at www.measuremarketing.net.

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